MIT Professor Predicts Earth’s Next Mass Extinction To Begin By 2100

by Ezra Buckley on September 25, 2017

Geologists have long been fascinated with past extinction events and now it appears we’re may be headed for another one by the end of the century. This finding is based on a mathematical analysis of the five mass extinction events occurring within the past 540 million years.

What do all of these mass extinction events have in common? Unusually high increases in global carbon, leading to a destabilization of practically every ecosystem, with a punctuated impact on oceans. Dr. Daniel Rothman, a professor at MIT’s Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department took a mathematical approach to investigate why some carbon anomalies in the past have led to minor disruptions while others have led to mass extinctions.